Last night on November 5th 2013, the American Public Health Association (APHA) dealt a huge loss to the BDS campaign after it had extensively propagandized the committee members on Israel’s medical practices towards the Palestinians in occupied territories. For months, BDS activists had gone after members on the APHA committee to convince them to vote in favor of their prestigious organization to boycott Israel and it’s medical practices. The committee held its vote last night, and was overwhelmingly voted against boycotting Israel by 74% compared to 3% voting in favor of boycott. This loss deals a huge blow to the BDS campaign which has been desperate in searching for wins lately in the campaign to boycott Israel.

The importance of going after a prestigious organization such as the APHA shows that the BDS campaign and their activists have no limit to which organization they will reach out to and no limit to the means that they will use in order to get a victory. The BDS activists were using improper information in order to sway committee members to vote in favor of boycott, for example that Israel refused to medically treat Palestinians and grant access to public health when needed. If the BDS campaign had been victorious in getting the American Public Health Association, an organization full of medical professionals in the United States to boycott Israel, the immediate effect would have been felt in the public diplomacy realm. This would have catered to altering Israel’s image in the medical field, which is something that Israel takes great pride in.

The document, "Improving Health in Occupied Palestinian Territory" was not written by impartial social scientists, instead, it was authored by activists with a clear political agenda. Co-written by anti-Israel activists Amy Hagopian, Nancy Stoller and Cindy Sousa, it is characterized by sloppy data, sloppy science and a universally sloppy conclusion- that Israel is always to blame. They present "facts" devoid of context , and come to the conclusion (don't they always?) that BDS is the answer. They discuss life expectancy in Gaza, without noting that it is
significantly higher than the world average of 66.57 years or that it
far exceeds that of its neighbor, Egypt. They discuss stunting, without
context- the Palestinian territories have the second lowest rate of
stunting in the region. And they blame Israel for the high rate of
birth defects in the region, ignoring the enormous role of
consanguineous marriages in the occurrence of congenital malformations.
They write about the "decline in amount of food consumed", without
mentioning the Western levels of obesity, and efforts to control
that as a public health concern.

Obesity rate among Palestinians

They largely ignore the huge role Israel has played in providing health services to the Palestinians, and throughout the region. In the end, the American Public Health Association was not fooled, and rejected the measure by a margin of 3 to 1.

The reaction to this major BDS fail? "Even when we lose we win". We've heard that one before.